Fieldwork

2019 – International Year of Indigenous Languages

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2019 – International Year of Indigenous Languages

2019 – Internationaal Jaar van de Inheemse Talen

2019 – Internationalt år for indfødte sprog

2019 – Ôma askiy kâ-miyawâtamihk iyiniw-pîkiskwêwina misiwêskamik

2019 – Hur gatung haba ba pinang ajimi gi’e palika kakanap taang unavera

On the 28th of January, the start of the International Year of Indigenous Languages (IYIL) will take place. IYIL is an initiative by the United Nations and is organised by UNESCO. International Years are organised yearly, with the goal of creating awareness for a particular issue of current importance to earth and/or mankind, and to allow and mobilise people to take action for a certain cause. Already in 2016 did the UN decide that 2019 would … ↪

Linguistic Ethnography in Barber Shoppen

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In the spring of 2014, I (and other brave MA-students) took a course in Linguistic Ethnography at Aarhus University. Our research group quickly decided to explore the field of local haircutting parlors. This blog entry tells of my field work at Barber Shoppen.

Barber Shoppen is ‘a wonderful place where men can be men without having to be filled with female products and girl talk’. In essence, it caters the wishes of men who seek the atmosphere and service of an old school barber. When walking in through their doors, I expected to meet beefy, mustached men in aprons giving close shaves, customers smoking cigars and enjoying a scotch in classic barber seats, soft jazz music playing in … ↪

Creoles, fieldwork and linguistic theory – an interview with Peter Bakker

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Photo: Peter Bakker with a speaker of Yamomami in Brazil

Peter Bakker is a Dutch-born linguist who is active in a number of different linguistic fields, chief among which pidgins and creoles, mixed languages and contact-induced language change. He has also published extensively on Romani linguistics. He is the author/editor of numerous books, which include A Language of Our Own: The Genesis of Michif, the Mixed Cree-French Language of the Canadian Métis (1992), Bibliography of Modern Romani Linguistics (1997, with Yaron Matras), The Typology and Dialectology of Romani (1997, co-edited with Yaron Matras and Hristo Kyuchukov), and Contact Languages: A Comprehensive Guide (2013, co-edited with Yaron Matras; paperback 2016). Some of his other interests include genderlects, language genesis and the … ↪

What can linguistics do (for me)? – or how I turned (from) science (in)to art

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Cover photo: Video still from Some Islands: Pitcairn Island 2016

I write this purposefully provocative piece from Adelaide, South Australia. The University of Adelaide is where I studied linguistics as a graduate student from 2007-2011 and where I worked as a postdoctoral researcher from 2011-2013. From one of my intellectual ground zero points I want to ask myself: what did I learn about linguistics during that time? And further: what can linguistics as a discipline do for me and possibly for others? I pose these two questions because I am situated at a verge; I have begun work in earnest as an experimental documentary film maker where I am turning the arduous work of several of my jaunts of linguistic … ↪

Fieldwork in a maroon community in Brazil – an interview with Ana Paulla Braga Mattos

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[This blog post is part of a three-way interview between Kristoffer Friis Bøegh, Jeroen Willemsen and Ana Paulla Braga Mattos.]

Ana Paulla Braga Mattos is a PhD-researcher at Aarhus University. She conducted fieldwork on Kalunga, an Afro-Brazilian Portuguese variety spoken in the state of Goiás in Brazil. She has one publication about Kalunga coming out soon with the De Gruyter series on Colonial and Postcolonial Linguistics, and another paper comparing Kalunga and other language varieties from the Portuguese-speaking world submitted. She is currently writing about sentential negation in Kalunga Portuguese. We interviewed her in Aarhus about her experiences as a fieldworker.

Could you briefly summarise your descriptive project and the fieldwork you conducted?

I did fieldwork in the state … ↪

Fieldwork in Saint Croix – an interview with Kristoffer Friis Bøegh

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[This blog post is part of a three-way interview between Kristoffer Friis Bøegh, Jeroen Willemsen and Ana Paulla Braga Mattos.]

Kristoffer Friis Bøegh is a PhD-researcher at Aarhus University. He conducted fieldwork on Crucian, an English-based creole language spoken on St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands. He has published on creoles and African languages and is currently analysing his field data. We interviewed him in Aarhus about his experiences as a fieldworker.

Could you briefly summarise your descriptive project and the fieldwork you conducted?

I went to St. Croix, which is one of the Virgin Islands in the Caribbean, to study the local English-lexifier creole language, locally known as Crucian. My project is part of an ongoing effort … ↪

Fieldwork in Nusa Tenggara Timur – an interview with Jeroen Willemsen

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[This blog post is part of a three-way interview between Kristoffer Friis Bøegh, Jeroen Willemsen and Ana Paulla Braga Mattos.]

Jeroen Willemsen is a PhD-researcher at Aarhus University. He conducted fieldwork on Reta, a Papuan language spoken in Eastern Indonesia. Besides his work on Reta, he has published on the function and development of applicatives and serial verbs, and is currently writing a descriptive grammar of Reta. We interviewed him in Aarhus about his experiences as a fieldworker.

Can you briefly summarise your descriptive project and the fieldwork you conducted?

I went to the Nusa Tenggara Timur region of Eastern Indonesia to describe a language called Reta. It’s mainly spoken in two small villages in the south of the … ↪